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"I recently read that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to make the mortgage loan closing process more consumer friendly. Do you think it can?" I read the statement by the CFPB director, who correctly identified the closing problem: too many documents many of which are badly-designed, insufficient time for borrowers to read them, and insufficient help in understanding them. But I wouldn't delay purchasing a home until CFPB makes the closing process consumer-friendly, because that isn't going to happen anytime soon -- if ever. CFPB controls only a few of the documents in the closing package, the most important of which is its new Loan Estimate form which becomes effective in August 2015. In some earlier articles, I described the forthcoming Loan Estimate as a major disappointment. It will be an improvement over the Good Faith Estimate and Truth in Lending forms that it replaces only in collapsing two poor disclosure documents into one poor disclosure document. The remaining documents in closing packages are required by other Federal agencies, states, and the individual lender dealing with the borrower. Each entity is focused on its own disclosure, and how it fits into the total package is ignored. Whether CFPB can do anything about that is doubtful. CFPB can require that the borrower have more time to read documents before closing, and the director indicates an intention to extend the borrower's right to receive the closing package from 1 day before closing, which is the rule now, to 3 days. However, extending the period without making the document package more manageable won't help many consumers. Few of them now take advantage of the one-day period. Classifying Documents In this article, I take a different approach to making the closing package more manageable to borrowers. This approach divides the document package the borrower receives into 4 groups that call for different treatment. Only one of them requires the borrower's...

While housing news in the US is mixed - starts rebounded above one million units at annual rates on a surge in apartments while the NAHB Housing Market Sentiment Index slipped to 45 - other markets are spreading fear and anxiety. China's housing market appears to be peaking, raising fears of a further slowdown in [&#8230;]

The sharply divided Senate Banking Committee vote on the Johnson-Crapo housing finance reform measure should serve as a clear signal that it is time for Congress to go back to the drawing board on plans for our system of housing finance. The Johnson-Crapo bill has serious problems for working Americans. If the bill in its current form became law, it would do enormous harm to homeownership opportunity. The bill must not be given a floor vote in the Senate. There has been an ill-advised and misplaced push to get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Doing so would be a mistake. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have affordable housing goals, which help to make sure that the market serves underserved communities, and which have had a tremendous positive impact. The Johnson-Crapo bill eliminates the affordable housing goals and does not do enough to ensure that all creditworthy borrowers are able to access conventional mortgage credit. Among the bill's problems: it would create a system where the regulator does not have meaningful authority to require institutions to serve all communities fairly. That is just one of several serious issues with the bill. The bottom line is that less conventional lending to creditworthy families means fewer homeowners, which hurts communities and the economy at large. Therefore, making sure that responsible credit is made available to all creditworthy borrowers is in our national interest. It's also essential to the future of the middle class in America. Homeownership is the single most effective way for working-class people to build wealth and enter the middle class. So, fixing and preserving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be the best hope for the American middle class. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to be regulated properly, they need to be required to maintain sufficient capital reserves, and they need to be operated transparently. But given the current legislation, eliminating them would be reckless and foolish. Fannie and Freddie have...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a statewide effort to combat so-called zombie properties by encouraging the state legislature to pass the Abandoned Property Relief Act he proposed earlier this year.

The next weapon in home buying -- big data -- is here, and is not leaving its mark without controversy. Real estate websites are now providing hyper-specific and localized demographic information about neighborhoods, such as crime statistics and school ratings, and their residents, including race and educational status, across the country, coined by the term "big data." StreetAdvisor, the leading site of its kind, goes as far as filtering resident data into personal identifiers, like "hipsters" and "gay and ***" and neighborhood characteristics, such as "neighborly spirit" "gym & fitness," according to Teke Wiggin of Inman news. Inman News recently ran a detailed exposé on the rise of super-local demographics data as well as its role undermining real estate laws and agents. The Fair Housing Act prohibits "steering," defined as influencing the make up of a geographic location by providing its demographic information. While real estate agents have been complying with the anti-steering law since 1968 with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, these websites seem to circumvent this law that pertains to them as well. Many agents are weary of the legalities and fairness of information provided on the sites to not only the neighborhoods and their residents, but to the role of agents across the country. Home buyers on the other hand are welcoming the new data given to them. The current mindset prevalent today is if the information is there why not use it? We live in an age of efficiency and accessibility, always having immediate access to media content, communication, personal information on social media, and now neighborhood demographics. One site, Relocality, even matches a home buyer with a neighborhood best suited to one's lifestyle based on information provided on one's Facebook page. The interconnectivity of new media and our personal lives has been exposed in the form of hyper-local demographic information...

The pronounced slowdown in U.S. home sales in the second half of 2013 was primarily caused by a rise in mortgage rates that made borrowing more expensive for potential home buyers, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh has found that five Chinese People's Liberation Army members hacked into the computers of a number of businesses and organizations in western Pennsylvania -- including U.S. Steel, Westinghouse Electric, and United Steel Workers. Read full article &#62;&#62;

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court said Bank of America Corp was not liable to shareholders for allegedly concealing a $10 billion fraud lawsuit by American International Group Inc, whose filing led to a 20-percent one-day plunge in the bank's stock price.

Good morning and welcome to MBA's 2014 National Secondary Market Conference. We're so pleased all of you could be here. We have incredible attendance this year with over 1,500 attendees. This demonstrates the importance and magnitude of our secondary marketplace today. I want to take a moment to thank Freedom Mortgage for sponsoring our session this morning and supporting MBA. Without their support, and the support of all our sponsors, this conference and programming would not be possible.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Treasury prices rose Monday, sending yields lower in a continuation of last week's buying. The 10-year Treasury note yield, which falls as prices rise, was down 1.5 basis points at 2.505%, after falling to its lowest closing level since last October in the prior week. The 30-year bond yield fell 1.5 basis points to 3.332%, and the 5-year note yield dropped 1.5 basis points to 1.533%. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and San Francisco Fed President John Williams are scheduled to speak on a panel just after noon Eastern Monday. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes from its last policy meeting.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen isn't too worried about the possibility of China's financial system collapsing, but thinks it's enough of a risk that it "bears monitoring closely." At least that was her position late last year, when she answered formal written questions from Senators as part of her confirmation process. (Her comments were [...]

By SVP of Credit Pricing, Risk Transfer, and Securitization Donna Corley The U.S. housing finance system is never static. As the details of possible future systems are debated on Capitol Hill and the Internet, the current system continues to change while financing billions of dollars in single- and multifamily mortgages every month. Freddie Mac's approach to mortgage finance is changing in ways intended to maintain liquidity for borrowers while posing less risk to taxpayers. Read More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The two new nominees to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors are expected to push for an expanded Fed role in managing the U.S. economy, working to replace the current raft of programs that resulted from the financial crisis with more permanent tools.

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